Community Policy & Moderation Guidelines

Community Policy & Moderation Guidelines Lyrics

Community Policy

Genius is a place where everyone should feel comfortable to contribute knowledge and take part in thoughtful discussion. The forums engage Genius users beyond the music knowledge project, providing a space where contributors and music fans can discuss, debate, and continue to foster our growing online community. The Genius Moderation team leads the conversation, adding thoughtful contributions to community discussions as well as creating interesting topics of their own. They also make sure that the forums and song pages are a safe place for everyone.

We take abuse, harassment, and hate speech seriously. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean you get to post whatever you want on Genius—we reserve the right to remove content that doesn’t foster a welcoming environment. Reporting abuse, messaging a moderator or staff member, or tagging @genius-moderation will alert the moderation team to users who intentionally disregard these guidelines. Continued violation of the guidelines will result in disciplinary measures, which may ultimately lead to account suspension.

Forum Etiquette

Keep all discussions civil. Be respectful of the topics and the people discussing them, even if you disagree with some of what is being said.

Try not to stray from the discussion topic. If you are straying off into a new topic, start a new thread for it.

Give new members some slack. Make them feel welcome into the community. You were once a new contributor too.

Don't feed the flames of bad behavior. It consumes your energy and wastes everyone’s time. Contact a mediator, moderator, or community staff member who will resolve the situation.

Penalty System

Genius moderation uses a 3-strike penalty system. Upon a user’s first offense, a member of the moderation team (mediators, moderators, and community staff members) will reach out with an initial warning and a link to the moderation guidelines. After the initial warning, further offenses will result in penalty strikes that include temporary bans of increasing length until the third strike which will result in a permanent ban.

Here’s the process:

Warning

1 strike = 24 hour suspension

2 strikes = 7 day suspension

3 strikes = permanent ban from the site

However, there are more severe offenses that will result either in a permanent ban following an initial warning, or an immediate ban without warning depending on severity. Users who break the guidelines in multiple ways at the same time will be penalized for the most severe offense.

Offenses Key

Full strikes:
These offenses will earn the offender 1 strike.

Targeted mass-downvoting—5 or more downvotes in succession on a single user’s contributions

Derailing or Hijacking—Purposely throwing a thread off topic, so much so that the original discussion is unable to continue or creating a separate conversation.

Creating Alternate Accounts—We only allow one account per person. If you lose access to your account, there's no need to create another one. Instead, try resetting your password on the login page. If you are still unable to login, please contact a community staff member.

Songpage Spamming—Repeatedly posting the same or similar comments in a songpage is also considered Spamming. Any suggestion/annotation considered spam will be removed. No advertising or referral links to other services is allowed.

Posting NSFW Content—Posting content anywhere on the site that contains nudity, pornography, or violence/gore. This includes posts that contain links to NSFW content, even if the content is not immediately viewable in the post.

Community Roles:
Verified Artists, Editors, Mediators and Moderators are expected to behave as role-models on this site and in addition to these penalties they may also lose their role privileges, depending on the nature and severity of the offense. De-editoring and removal of Verified Artist status is made by Moderators or Staff. Removing Mediator and Moderator role is only made by Staff.